Domain of One’s Own: Research

(Pictured above: David Morgen at the Atlanta Regional DoOO Incubator, April 2014)

How long has it been since you’ve been an email chain that you’d call “exciting”? I had one yesterday.

I received a course release to compose and publish an article on the pedagogical and administrative methodologies of faculty using Domain of One’s Own-inspired work in their classes and/or programs. So, yesterday I sent an email to a bunch of colleagues (and people who don’t me, but whose work I have been admiring from afar) to solicit their interest and availability in my research project for this semester.

I’ve been working in/around DoOO for three years. When I found the community — and community is the central concept for DoOO (thanks David, Jim, and Tim) — it was a provided the perfect extension of new media literacies work that I’d started building into my classes at Georgia Tech and Georgia State. Since that time, I helped organize the Domain of One’s Own Incubator in Atlanta, coordinated and led the Domain Pilot in my former department, and consulted with faculty interested in self-hosted domain pedagogy in other departments around Atlanta.

Because of the DoOO community’s bootstrap, DIY ethic, it has evolved organically and locally. Domain work isn’t particular to a tool nor does it use a set of prescribed guidelines. Instead it’s a methodology, an “way of seeing” teaching, learning, and digital citizenship that I’ve always found consistent with my own foundation in critical pedagogy.

However, I see that the community needs some research support — more engaged scholarship in documenting its growth, history, application, principles (broadly defined), pedagogy, and administration. My work this semester will drill into those last two.

The responses to my initial “call” yesterday were encouraging and rich. I received overwhelming interest in helping me with my project. I’ll be scheduling a series of phone and video interviews over the next several weeks to gather resources, examples, and history on how self-hosted domains are operating around the country (and, perhaps, the world). I’ll be paying particular attention to the kinds of assignments that faculty find most useful and the successes and challenges that domain-centered approaches present to larger administrative units (departments, programs, and universities).

I’m certainly not confining my research net to this initial email recipients. If you’re playing with self-hosted domains, an experienced user at Reclaim Hosting, or even just considering tinkering with this kind of curricular initiative, please reply below. I’ll also be setting up a Slack channel in which to organize my work and encourage conversation between members of the DoOO community; let me know if you’d like to be included.